'It's Alex, isn't it? A friend of Jamie's from Sandhurst? How lovely of you to come!'
For a moment Alex gazed at her, taking in the short chestnut crop, the cool grey-green eyes, the Italian silks, the flimsy and very visible lingerie beneath.
Where did you begin with a creature like this?
'I'm Sophie,' she continued encouragingly, swiping a couple of glasses of champagne from a passing waiter's tray and handing one to Alex.
'And these dreadful people' she gestured vaguely around her 'are my friends. Aren't they ghastly?'
Alex managed a smile.
'You should see mine,' he said.
'Is this party to celebrate anything?'
'My twenty-sixth birthday,' said Sophie.
'My entry into middle age.'
'You look well on it,' said Alex, wishing he could have found something cleverer to say.
'Do I? God, I don't deserve to. You look.. .' She hesitated.
'How old are you?'
'Thirty-four.'
'I was going to say that you look older than this lot' she waved vaguely at the people around them 'but you don't. You just look... different.~ She held his gaze, Alex noticed, rather than darting her eyes about the room in search of the next flirtation, the next conversational fix. So steady was her regard so intimate, somehow that they might have been alone together.
'Well, there probably aren't too many other soldiers here.'
She laughed.
'That's certainly true. But I've met a few soldiers in my time and they didn't have what you've got that sort of wary look behind the eyes.'
She dropped her voice to an enquiring murmur.
'How did that get there?'
Alex looked away, momentarily uncomfortable, breaking the cocoon that they had briefly spun about themselves. Sophie watched him patiently.
'Jamie wouldn't tell me what you do,' he said eventually.
'I'm supposed to ask you in person.'
She shrugged.
'Oh, I'm a fashion PR. I get column inches in the glossies for designers.'
'I bet some of those designers are grateful for a few inches,' said Alex.
'Alex!' shrieked Sophie in mock outrage. She turned to a man in a canary-yellow biker's outfit and Alex, taking his cue, drifted away. By one of the windows he saw Jamie, glass in hand, talking to the Prada girl. Alex caught his eye and winked, and Jamie flushed a slightly deeper shade of pink than usual.
These are nice enough people, thought Alex, but what the fuck am I doing here, precisely?
He wandered into a large kitchen, fitted out with tiny laser-like spotlights and vast brushed-aluminium units and appliances.
The placed looked like a safe depository he'd once guarded. Opening the walk-in fridge, he found himself a cold Mexican beer. The champagne went down the sink.
At one end of the room was a large picture window, looking out over Sloane Street. For several minutes Alex stood there in unmoving silence, watching the northward crawl of red taillights towards Knightsbridge. At that moment, it seemed that he was disconnected from everything and everyone that he knew. His SAS career had separated him from his family, promotion had lifted him out of the orbit of his fellow NCOs, and he guessed that both age and background would set him apart from most of his brother officers. He didn't particularly regret any of this except possibly the distance that had grown between himself and his family. This was as much a matter of logistics as anything else: Hereford was a long way away from the Essex coast and London stood between them. He just didn't make it down there often enough.
Nor had he ever been married. He'd had lots of girlfriends over the years but had always held back from proposing to them. There was plenty of time for family life, he'd always reckoned, when he wasn't being yo-yoed around the world by the Regiment.
Ireland had discouraged him, too. He'd seen brave soldiers fall apart when their wives and children were threatened. What would it be like, Alex wondered, planning a future with someone? And what sort of person would that someone have to be if they weren't going to end up at each other's throats?
Far below, in Sloane Street, an articulated lorry straddled the traffic where it had jackknifed while attempting to turn into a side street. Long lines of cars had built up on both sides of the road and the faint blare of their protest was audible through the heavy plate glass. Behind him Alex heard the suck of the opening fridge.
'You must be Jamie's friend. Sophie thought you'd done a runner.'
He turned to find a pretty fair-haired girl in jeans and a floaty top jacking open one of the Mexican beers.
'Still here, I'm afraid.' He extended his hand.
'I'm Alex.'
'I'm Stella.' She looked at him appraisingly and grinned.
'She'll be really glad you're still here. She was like oh no, he's gone, we've completely freaked him out. Not that I'm supposed to tell you that, of course.
'I can keep a secret,' said Alex.
'Yeah, I'll bet you can,' said Stella, drawing alongside him.
'Interesting view down there?'
They peered down through the summer twilight.
'Fashion's not really one of my special subjects,' Alex told her. Stella nodded.
'Unlike most fashion ista babes, there's a lot more to Sophie than her job.'
'I'm sure,' said Alex.
'Are you a PR too?'
'Nah. Sophie does the London PR for my company.
I'm a designer.'
Behind them there was a sudden overexcited hubbub. Alex glanced over his shoulder to discover a tall, anxious-looking girl chopping lines of white powder on one of the polished aluminium draining boards. A half-dozen other modelly looking boys and girls crowded impatiently round her. Banknotes were produced and small hoovering sounds ensued. One evenly tanned young man whom Alex vaguely recognised had a violent sneezing fit into a paper kitchen towel. There was nervous laughter from the others, but by the sixth sneeze the blood spatters were clearly visible.
'You don't disapprove?' asked Stella, watching him watching them.
'Me? No.' Alex held up his beer and squinted at the label.
'Personally I'd rather go this way than that way, but .. .' He shrugged.
'Each to his own?'
Alex looked over at the powder-nosed models.
'Or her own.
The kitchen was filling up. Stella introduced Alex to a film director named Danny Biggs, for whose latest project she was designing costumes.
'What's the picture going to be about?' Alex asked.
'Bunch of geezers turning over a bank,' said Danny.
'Working title 'Hair of the Dog'.'
'Why do you need a fashion designer to dress bank robbers?' Alex asked him.
'Most villains I've come across are fat, middle-aged white men in dodgy gold jewellery and knocked-off sports gear the sort of stuff you can pick up in any high street.'
'Well, we 'ave to improve on reality,' explained Danny.
'Dress 'em in ruffled shirts an' Gucci whistles.'
At that moment Jamie appeared with the Prada girl and touched fists with Stella.
